ELLE.COM/UK September 2O19 153ELLEVoice“ I HAVE so MUCH
ENE RGY T H AT
I ALWAYS WANTED
to HAVE SIX or
SEVEN CAREERS ”
On my way to Cosme, a chic restaurant on the prettiest block of Manhattan’s
Flatiron district, I run slap bang into a young woman. She’s fresh out of
the shower, her wet hair falling over her shoulders. As I crane my neck up
to make eye contact – she’s that tall – my sunglasses fall from the top of
my head. She swoops down, with all the grace and speed of a peregrine
falcon, to catch them. Once in her possession, she polishes them with
the hem of her skirt, folds them up and hands them back with a smile.
This, it turns out, is Daniela Soto- Innes, the ‘world’s best female
chef ’ and the woman I am here to inter view. Her morning has already
involved yoga, a 45 -minute SoulCycle session and a stop to check
in on her other restaurant, Atla, which ser ves a slightly less fancy
version of the haute Mexican cuisine that Cosme is famous for.
Cosme, in case you missed the memo, is reshaping the future
of Mexican food in the US, and Daniela is the woman who is
upending New York’s hypercompetitive, largely male, kitchen culture.
By 2O2O, she plans to add two further restaurants to her name, such
is the demand (and waiting list) to get into Cosme. All this, and the
chef hasn’t even blown out the candles on her 3Oth birthday cake yet.
As we walk into Cosme together,
Daniela stops to embrace every
employee we meet along the way,
following it up with a few minutes
of chit-chat in Spanish. This means it
takes about 1O minutes before we
reach the kitchen downstairs. As
we step inside, however, Daniela’s
sunny warmth breaks into the hard-
eyed steely focus of an army captain.
The team lines up in front of her, like
soldiers on sentry duty, as she gives
instructions for the day ahead. And
then they’re off, dispersing like hornets
across the kitchen, where they get to
work, heads bent, their fingers dancing
over vegetables, necks craned over
pans gurgling with water. Then there’s
Daniela, floating among them all, making tweaks, voicing words of
encouragement, both smiling and frowning in equal measure.
She does this for a few minutes until, at last, she alights upon the
pastry chef Isabel Cross’ corner. ‘Super simple, like an evaporated
milk ice cream,’ she begins to say, as Daniela nibbles a strawberry and
listens, eyes narrowing in concentration. Suddenly, she shakes her head.
Isabel scrambles to offer a selection of other ice-cream alternatives.
‘No,’ Daniela says, decisively. ‘A Chantilly cream ice cream.’ Isabel
nods in respectful compliance. And then she’s gone. Off to the next task.
Daniela, it turns out, has just come off an 18 -hour shift at Cosme,
followed by a Sunday ‘off ’ that sounds like anything but. She spent
the day with a huge crew of her friends, she explains, taking the two-
hour journey to and from Asbury Park, New Jersey, to see a young
multi-instrumentalist perform. Saturday nights at Cosme finish at
around 3am, she says. It’s not untypical to ser ve around 42O
customers, many of whom end up staying for hours drinking mezcal
margaritas in the plant-filled space. Their regulars, largely glossy
New Yorkers who know where to get the best food in the city, become
‘like family’, Daniela says. One regular comes in almost daily, she
laughs, and helps with seating diners when it gets busy.
If her life sounds like a train with no brakes, then Daniela knows no
other way of life. Her first cooking job was in her grandma’s bakery
in Houston, after moving there from Mexico City at the age of 12.
Her mother, a lawyer, also had culinary ambitions, and would take
Daniela, the youngest of her three children, along with her to cooking
classes. Her time ‘done’ at the bakery, Daniela moved on to an Italian
restaurant, lying about her age. She was 14 years old.
Daniela also credits her Montessori education with her early
success. ‘You’re never judged by grades; it’s more about finding
what you’re good at and embracing it,’ she explains. ‘I have so much
energy that I always wanted, like, six or seven careers. I found that, in
the restaurant industry, you can do that. You’re not a florist, but you’re
picking the flowers. You’re not a DJ, but you’re picking the playlist. You
can be literally anything, and you can learn it all within one space.
That’s what I love about this restaurant and being so young – there’s
never a time that I feel like I’ve already learned everything.’ It’s no
wonder that she relates so strongly to the music of Tash Sultana – the
non-binary multi-instrumentalist she went to see in New Jersey. ‘Watching
them play, I felt like someone understood me for the first time.’
Even though Daniela’s ‘family’ is made up of the many waiting
staff, bartenders, porters and everyone
else who makes a restaurant function,
ultimately Daniela is both mother and
God here. An unusual position to find
yourself in – not only at 28, but also
as a woman. Professional kitchens
are notorious for their masculine,
often aggressive, deeply hierarchical
culture. I ask her how she pushes
back when her authority is challenged.
‘Maybe that person needs a little
bit of help to understand what
respect is. If you are arrogant and you
come in with, like, an attitude...’ she
trails off, looking for the words. ‘It’s kind
of, like, how dogs know when you’re
afraid, right?’ She makes piercing
eye contact – her eyes an unusually
pure, deep black. ‘People know when you’re afraid.’
When I ask Daniela about sexual discrimination in the kitchen,
she bats it away, saying she has never knowingly experienced it. (‘Maybe
I just didn’t notice? I can be kind of... spacey.’) She does, however,
acknowledge that the industry is rife with sexism and aggression.
For herself, though, the answer is simple: don’t work with bad people.
‘I’ve always picked restaurants where I liked the chef as a
person first. If you like the chef as a person, and you also admire
them, that’s a balance. And that’s when you know you’re going to
grow. If you go to a place where it’s like, “Oh that place is amazing,
and the chef is crazy”, you’re never going to grow. You might grow
your cooking skills, but not as a human.’ As far as her own hiring
philosophy goes, she takes pride in the fact that almost everyone in
her kitchen is an immigrant. ‘In our country, the government is so crazy
that they’re building a wall. But here, we’re in our world.’
The ‘Chikis’ – short for chiquititas, meaning ‘tiny’ in Spanish –
epitomise Daniela’s hiring philosophy. Valentina and Estefania Brito,
half of a set of Venezualan quadruplets, have worked at Cosme for
two and three years, respectively. Recently promoted, Valentina now
has the enviable task of shadowing Daniela as she teaches her the
ways of the kitchen. In Venezuela, Valentina worked at a travel agency;
when she joined Cosme at the restaurant, she didn’t even know